We’ve gotten Social and Warzone matchmaking to a decent state with recent changes. It may be a tight enough at this point that we can test expanding the search faster than we do now.
In looking at the current settings we’ve decided to speed up how fast the new team balancing rule expands its tolerance in Social and Warzone. We were expanding over 150 seconds and are lowering that down to what the rest of the Social rules are at, which is 40 seconds.
The worst case we allow in the matchmaking isn’t changing, but by expanding the team balancing rule faster, it should give players more chances to get into matches than before by not holding them back for a match that was unlikely to happen.
We’ll be monitoring the results to inform further tuning.
As I mentioned before, I didn’t enjoy HCS Oddball due to the wide skill gaps. Since then I tried the updated playlist but my concern remains with typical games having me wildly outgunned (e.g. me Bronze 4 vs. team Platinum 1, Gold 5, Gold 5 and Silver 6). Will this change or is that all she wrote?
Also, I notice your Skill, Matchmaking, and Ranking presentation from GDC 2016 is now available on YouTube.
> 2535439819568780;5:
> I have a question : is this new system will result in less balanced matches ? I mean is the balance will be sacrificed in favor of less waiting time ?
That is the trade-off. The proposed update sounds like it won’t severely change balancing, but based on the description it sounds like there will be a slight increase in the prevalence of matches where the winning odds are 70-30%.
> 2533274839818445;1:
> Social and Warzone Matchmaking UpdateWe’ve gotten Social and Warzone matchmaking to a decent state with recent changes. It may be a tight enough at this point that we can test expanding the search faster than we do now.
>
> In looking at the current settings we’ve decided to speed up how fast the new team balancing rule expands its tolerance in Social and Warzone. We were expanding over 150 seconds and are lowering that down to what the rest of the Social rules are at, which is 40 seconds.
>
> The worst case we allow in the matchmaking isn’t changing, but by expanding the team balancing rule faster, it should give players more chances to get into matches than before by not holding them back for a match that was unlikely to happen.
>
> We’ll be monitoring the results to inform further tuning.
So does that mean after 40 seconds the search is expanded to its widest allowable parameters?
Are you expecting people to find matches almost instantly now? 40 seconds goes by pretty quick when you’re searching and to have an outcome of a possible lopsided match as the result of going past that doesn’t really sound desirable. I’m just picturing it like it was before with me matching dedicated parties nonstop.
Edit: I only had one game that was before the 40 second mark last night.
Maybe this has been answered in a previous topic, but in lieu of a population counter what if there was an “average search time” number viewable for each playlist? I can see positives and negatives for displaying this number - but I think it is a more important number than population count, which I know people often ask for.
I’ve seen other games show this value, so I’d be interested in how it affects player behavior. There may be existing research on this, I’m just not aware of it.
<mark>This post has been edited by a moderator. Please refrain from making non-constructive posts.</mark> *Original post. Click at your own discretion.
343 you have ruined halo, you took a masterpiece that changed the gaming world, that gave so many of us good memories and fun times, and you ruined it. Even your pro players are telling you to stop what yall are doing, and you just don’t care, you ask for feed back without any intention of listening to it. I really hope yall wake up and fix a game that is beloved by so many.
> 2533274815456767;9:
> Maybe this has been answered in a previous topic, but in lieu of a population counter what if there was an “average search time” number viewable for each playlist? I can see positives and negatives for displaying this number - but I think it is a more important number than population count, which I know people often ask for.
>
> I’ve seen other games show this value, so I’d be interested in how it affects player behavior. There may be existing research on this, I’m just not aware of it.
The one in Heroes of the Storm is usually VERY optimistic. Would also be interested in hearing Josh’s thoughts on this.
We’re definitely getting matches faster, but there are still a lot of searches that come up full for a second and then immediately drop a player. Sometimes it backfills in time, but most times it doesn’t. We’ve had some success (hit or miss though) hard resetting our xboxs which seems to keep us from getting frozen/dropped from the search, but obviously doesn’t help when players outside our fireteam are dropped.
I cannot find Champion SWAT games. There is no Onyx/Champion players to be found for a high level competitive SWAT game. The few remaining competitive SWAT Players are running 1 Champ or 1 Onyx account with multiple new smurf accounts and playing against gold, platinum, & diamond players and stomping them. I have to make a new smurf account every 1-2 days and obliterate social SWAT players until I get to a high Diamond rank and can’t get games anymore.
Halo 5 has been out for over 2 years now and there is no need for SWAT to be in the ranked playlists anymore since all the Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond SWAT players play this game socially nowadays. Social SWAT is not a bad thing. It worked very well for Halo Reach and Halo 4. There was a lot of interaction in the SWAT community back in the day. I personally enjoyed getting to know and play with new people on a regular basis without having to make a new gamertag.
I agree with Online Dater, make SWAT social, takes faaaaar too long to match higher ranked players if you match them at all, also we need more maps please!
<mark>This post has been edited by a moderator. Please do not repost content a moderator has removed, repost a topic that has been locked, or post about forum moderation decisions. If you have a question or concern about a forum moderation decision, please private message the applicable moderator.</mark> *Original post. Click at your own discretion.
> 2533274989448950;10:
> This post has been edited by a moderator. Please refrain from making non-constructive posts.*Original post. Click at your own discretion.343 you have ruined halo, you took a masterpiece that changed the gaming world, that gave so many of us good memories and fun times, and you ruined it. Even your pro players are telling you to stop what yall are doing, and you just don’t care, you ask for feed back without any intention of listening to it. I really hope yall wake up and fix a game that is beloved by so many.
As much as you may try to suppress that comment, what is being said is so true. It speaks volumes when some of the longest standing members of this games community don’t want to play anymore as they either; cannot play due to wait times, or are penalised for playing on smurf tags against unevenly matched players just to play a game series that they are devoted to.
> 2533274839720024;15:
> I cannot find Champion SWAT games. There is no Onyx/Champion players to be found for a high level competitive SWAT game. The few remaining competitive SWAT Players are running 1 Champ or 1 Onyx account with multiple new smurf accounts and playing against gold, platinum, & diamond players and stomping them. I have to make a new smurf account every 1-2 days and obliterate social SWAT players until I get to a high Diamond rank and can’t get games anymore.
>
> Halo 5 has been out for over 2 years now and there is no need for SWAT to be in the ranked playlists anymore since all the Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond SWAT players play this game socially nowadays. Social SWAT is not a bad thing. It worked very well for Halo Reach and Halo 4. There was a lot of interaction in the SWAT community back in the day. I personally enjoyed getting to know and play with new people on a regular basis without having to make a new gamertag.
A perfect example is Online Dater, as much as people may complain, he is probably one of the best SWAT players on halo generally. having amassed almost one million kills on halo reach alone. A game in which the matchmaking is social and not restricted to specific MMR values, it allows the entire community to play together, and in most cases create a stronger interest within the game itself.
I too prefer the old styles of halo where matchmaking for swat wasn’t purely restricted to your skillset, not because games were uneven, but because the community as a whole was more open with each other. You didn’t have groups of players running smurfs to try and hit you off your rank out of malicious intent. people spoke and played more freely with each other as they weren’t so focused on their own ranking trying to look like the best. Realistically you need to make swat a social playlist then, add more maps to the rotations to give more variation as playing the same few maps over and over is just tedious and boring.
> 2533274839818445;1:
> Social and Warzone Matchmaking UpdateWe’ve gotten Social and Warzone matchmaking to a decent state with recent changes. It may be a tight enough at this point that we can test expanding the search faster than we do now.
>
> In looking at the current settings we’ve decided to speed up how fast the new team balancing rule expands its tolerance in Social and Warzone. We were expanding over 150 seconds and are lowering that down to what the rest of the Social rules are at, which is 40 seconds.
>
> The worst case we allow in the matchmaking isn’t changing, but by expanding the team balancing rule faster, it should give players more chances to get into matches than before by not holding them back for a match that was unlikely to happen.
>
> We’ll be monitoring the results to inform further tuning.
Searching WZ solo (or in small fireteams) is a horrible matchmaking experience for me, unfortunately. I often search in fireteams so I wanted to see what the experience was like searching solo with these new parameters.
I tried searching solo (or in small fireteams) the past 2 days since these changes took effect, and the matchmaking fairness was among the worst I’ve seen. These parameters just do not work well for solo queue players (or small fireteams) with high MMR. Here’s my recent game history of solo (or small fireteam searches), and i specify each game how many people I had in my fireteam.
Out of my past 15 games played, 12 were solo or with small fireteams - I’ve linked those below. Of those 12 games, 9 were very unbalanced, against high MMR 12-man fireteams. Only 2 of the 12 were remotely fair games. So basically I am matching high MMR 12-mans 75% of the time when i search WZ solo. That doesn’t seem like the system is working as intended for solo queue players…
(solo) JIP in a pretty much hopeless game - (solo) Lose to a 12-man. - (4-man) Match the same 12-man, though several of them lag out or quit early so we have an easy win. Would have probably been an awful game otherwise. - (4-man) Lose to a 12-man. - (solo) Lose to a 12-man. - (solo) Lose to the same 12-man. - (2-man) Lose to the same 12-man. - (solo) Lose to a fireteam of unknown size. this was a reasonably fair game. - (solo) Lose to an 11-man. - (12-man) I join the 11-man and we win easily. - N/A since I’m in a 12-man. - (12-man) Match a 12-man and lose a close game. This was a fair game. N/A since I’m in a 12-man. - (12-man) Lose to another 12-man. This was fair too. N/A since I’m in a 12-man. - (2-man) lose to unknown size fireteam. This was a winnable game. - (2-man) farmed hard by a 12 man god squad. How did this match get made, please tell me? - (2-man) match the same 12-man god squad that farmed me, I dashboard quit before the game starts.TL;DR - I constantly match full fireteams while searching solo. If I’m not matching full fireteams (like when I solo search WZA), I simply get “unable to match” errors. Josh, I’ve posted this before, but if the MM platform can handle this, please consider making it easier for solo queue players and small fireteams to get into lower MMR games, so they aren’t stuck between a rock and a hard place: either unable to match or matching 12-mans all the time. It’s fine if you give me the worst teammates and make me carry, but matching 12-mans 75% of the time searching solo is just toxic.
> 2533274862181038;2:
> As I mentioned before, I didn’t enjoy HCS Oddball due to the wide skill gaps. Since then I tried the updated playlist but my concern remains with typical games having me wildly outgunned (e.g. me Bronze 4 vs. team Platinum 1, Gold 5, Gold 5 and Silver 6). Will this change or is that all she wrote?
>
> Also, I notice your Skill, Matchmaking, and Ranking presentation from GDC 2016 is now available on YouTube.
>
> Link: Skill, Matchmaking, and Ranking Systems Design (1:01:10)
Can you link me a game or two like this so I can see for sure what it is?